Consequences
by balladsinthebluegrass
Summary: Rick comes to terms with his actions and the consequences.


Michonne had sat at Rick's side next to Carl's bed for nearly two days. The surgery had been a success, or at least Carl hadn't died yet. Dr. Cloyd had said the bullet had gone clean through one spot on his head and out another with no bullet fragments left behind. It was a miracle, she had said, that the bullet had entered and exited his skull at exactly the positions it had, removing Carl's eye and a good portion of the surrounding flesh and bone without damaging the brain. Michonne took that for a sign that he would regain consciousness and heal. Surely the miracle wouldn't prove to be for nothing in the end. Rick, however, had given no sign that he had heard a word Dr. Cloyd had said. He had sat in his chair, staring at his son's face with a distant and unfocused look in his eyes. He proceeded to stay in that chair for the next two days, moving only to go to the bathroom off of Carl's room, returning immediately. He refused to eat or drink. He refused to sleep. He refused to speak a single word to anyone, even Michonne. When she had insisted, "Go home long enough to at least take a shower. You're still covered in blood, and you smell like a walker. I'll stay here the whole time and send for you if there's any change. You won't be gone long. Just a shower", he'd given no sign that he had even heard her. Though he said nothing intelligible, he would often mutter to himself just under his breath, rocking back and forth slightly as he did so.

On the evening of the second day, Michonne decided she would take a chance. She'd sat with Rick in that clinic room nearly every moment since Carl had been shot, and she was about to scream. She needed Carl to wake up, or Rick to move and say something, or just about anything to happen. She reached for Rick and wrapped her arms around him. His response was immediate and violent. He shoved her away and rasped out the only words he'd spoken since the accident, "Don't. Don't touch me." For the first time, he looked away from his son's face and into hers. A long moment passed before he added, "You don't know. You don't understand. You're trying to comfort me? Me?" He spat out the pronoun as if the word disgusted him. "You don't know. You don't know," he repeated several times as his gaze slid back to his son and the gentle rocking resumed. He fell silent after a few more repetitions, and he didn't speak a word the rest of the day.

Speechless at his unexpectedly extreme reaction, Michonne walked across the room to the small loveseat pushed up against one wall. Night was falling, and she too had barely slept for the last two days, though the exhaustion from fighting walkers for hours on end felt like it had seeped down to her bones. She lay down wearily and drifted into an uneasy sleep. She awoke sometime in the middle of the night to find Rick still rooted in his chair. She laid on the couch without moving and examined his slumped shoulders and his elbows digging into his knees as he held his head in his hands. His shaking was more pronounced than usual. Suddenly, Rick straightened and raised his head determinedly, as if he had come to some sort of a decision. He pushed back his chair with a loud scraping sound on the tiles and strode toward the door leading out of Carl's room. It was the first time he had approached that door since the accident.

"Where are you going?" Michonne asked.

Rick startled and stopped in his tracks, his hand on the doorknob. Whether he had thought she was still asleep or had forgotten altogether that she was there, she didn't know. "There's things I can't get back, Michonne," he told her as if that were a logical response. "Things I can't hold on to now even if I tried." He turned to look at her, his face pale and haggard, his eyes haunted. His weight shifted to one leg, his hands on the gun belt at his hips. "Would you stay with him? He'll need you if he wakes up." Without waiting for an answer, he quickly left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Michonne stayed where she was for a few moments until she could see him striding down the street from the small window by the couch. Quickly and quietly, she slipped from Carl's room and out the front door of the clinic. She wanted to do as Rick asked. She would regret it to the end of her days if Carl woke up while she was gone. Yet something in her gut told her to follow Rick. The look in his eyes had disturbed her, and he hadn't given her a straight answer when she had asked him where he was going.

She tailed him at a distance, slipping behind trees and other cover as Rick made his way to the wall. Much of the mess left after the herd's attack had been cleared away by now, the dead bodies buried or burned. However, most of the buildings were damaged in some way, a good many of them torn apart as the walkers had smashed windows and doors to get at the living inside. Here and there, the sidewalk was stained with large patches of blood, and the stains appeared black at this time of night. When Rick reached the wall, he used the crossbeams as foot and hand holds to swing himself up and over. _Smart move if you want to get out_ , she acknowledged to herself. _They won't open the gate before dawn. But the real question is, why are you wanting to get out at all?_ She couldn't imagine what business he had outside the walls at this time of night while his son lay unconscious in a hospital bed, but she was going to follow him and find out.

She scaled the wall as he had done and dropped silently on the other side. Thankfully, the moon was full and bright, providing plenty of light even in the wooded areas. Rick made little effort to be quiet as he went. He pulled his machete from its sheath at his side and quickly cut down any walkers that came near. She was glad that she had taken it away from him and cleaned it for him yesterday. It had still been covered in blood, some of it from the walkers, and some of it from Jessie. He was so efficient at clearing a path that Michonne found she herself had no walkers to fight as she followed him, a fact she was thankful for as the noise and motion surely would have given her away.

Eventually, Rick came to a stop in front of a small house covered in clapboard that had been white at some point in the distant past. There were several walkers milling about the junk-strewn yard, and Rick quickly dispatched them almost all of them. He struggled with the last one, however, and as they fell to the ground and wrestled with one another, he cried out, startling Michonne. "It won't be you! I won't be like you! Taking and taking and hurting everyone so I can get what I want! I won't be like you anymore!" He was screaming, raving, the sound echoing off the surrounding trees. If there were more walkers around, the noise would surely draw them. Michonne slid her sword from its sheath and prepared to abandon her hiding spot behind a massive oak tree in order to help him defeat the walker. Just at that moment, however, Rick got the upper hand and slid his machete under the walker's chin and up through its skull. It stopped moving immediately, and Rick kicked it aside. He lay in the leaf-covered grass for a moment, catching his breath, before rolling over and onto his knees.

Slowly, he raised his hand to his gun belt and freed his Colt from its holster. He sat on his knees for a several minutes, gazing at the gun in his hand and caressing it with a thumb. He suddenly began crying violently, the sobs racking his body. "Carl, I'm sorry," he moaned as he placed the barrel against his temple.

Michonne stepped wordlessly from her hiding place and stood in front of him. He paused, surprised, before giving her a crazed grin without lowering the gun. "I didn't hear you follow me."

"That's the point. Now put that down," Michonne ordered. When Rick didn't move, Michonne said, "I swear to God, if you do it, I will pick up that gun and put the next bullet in my own head. You don't want my blood on your hands, do you?" She didn't mean a word of it, and she desperately hoped Rick wouldn't call her bluff.

He didn't. Trembling, he dropped the gun, letting it fall to the forest floor. His empty hands fell to his lap, and he stared at them as he began sobbing openly. Michonne picked up the gun and tucked it into the back of her jeans, then knelt down on her knees to join him on the ground. "Rick," she prompted gently, "What are you doing?"

"It's all my fault. My fault," he moaned. "Carl is in that hospital bed because of me!"

"Rick, he loves you. We all do. He saw you were in danger, and he did what any of us would do: he sacrificed himself for you. That's not your fault, that's a gift he gave you."

"No, no, you don't understand," Rick whispered hoarsely. "You don't know. You don't understand. You didn't _see_." He hissed out the last word.

"Then tell me. Tell me so I can know and understand."

Rick brought his gaze up to meet hers. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, tears streaming down his face. His entire body shook as he spat out emphatically, "I fucked Jessie."

Michonne recoiled in shock, her hands flying to cover her mouth, but Rick continued without pausing. "I fucked her, and Ron walked in on us, and he saw. He knew. I murdered his father, and I fucked his mother, and I put the gun into his hand."

Her eyes wide with horror, Michonne whispered, "My God, what have you done?"

"I've killed him," Rick choked out. "I've killed my own son. So many people are dead because of me, people who would have been alive. That's my fault. And my son will die, too. If the injury doesn't kill him, some walker coming at him from his blind side will. That will be my fault, too." His gaze hadn't left her face the entire time. "I can't live with that, Michonne. How can I live knowing that?"

Michonne looked him straight in the eyes as she responded, "You're right. I don't have any words of comfort for you, Rick. It is your fault."

Rick threw himself onto her lap, moaning and wrapping his arms around her. "I'm worse than Shane!" he cried out. "At least he loved Lori and Carl! At least he didn't fool himself about what he was doing! I didn't even love her, Michonne," he sobbed. "I thought I did, but I didn't. I didn't want Ron and Sam for my own. I just wanted to feel good again, to forget for a little while. I threw away everything — everything! — for one night with a woman!"

They were both crying hard now, Michonne's tears falling into his hair and sliding down his neck, his tears wetting her shirt as he buried his face into her belly. They sat that way, still as if they were carved in stone for a long time, their sobs the only noise, their shaking shoulders the only movement.

Eventually, she gathered her thoughts. She pulled back and took hold of his chin in one hand, directing him to look her in the eyes. "You did this. You're going to have to live for the rest of your life with that knowledge. But you will _not_ kill yourself. I won't allow it. What if Carl comes out of this coma and finds out he nearly died and lost half his face in the process for nothing? Finds out his dad took a bullet to the head anyways? Can you understand how that would destroy him?"

Rick nodded weakly.

"No more suicide attempts, Rick. No more being stuck, consumed by what you've done and who you've been. You have a daughter who needs her big, strong dad to protect her until she's able to do it herself. You have a son who needs you to be there when he wakes up. He'll need you to teach him how to live again. You have a family and a whole community that looks to you for guidance and protection. I won't allow you to let all those people down, Rick. You don't get to escape from this. You have to learn to live with the pain."

Rick's grip around her tightened as he laid his head in her lap again. "I don't deserve to live, Michonne. You... you're always so selfless. You fight and work and protect, and you never do anything just for yourself. But me, I chose myself over my own son. I don't deserve to live," he repeated.

"No, you don't. But we don't get to choose whether we will live or die. The ones who deserve death often live on for a long time. Remember all that time I spent hunting the Governor?" she asked, and Rick nodded. "And we both had people we loved that didn't deserve to die, but they did. Like my son."

Rick's eyes widened as he raised his head to look at her, his sobs freezing.

"My sweet little boy," Michonne whispered, a ghost of a smile flitting across her tear-stained face. "He didn't deserve to die. He didn't even make a choice like Carl. He wasn't old enough. His daddy let him die, let him be eaten." She felt detached from the present as she spoke, seeing the scene replay again in her mind as it had countless times since that day. She reached for her katana and laid it in Rick's lap. "I put him down with my own sword. Andre... He was already dead and gone. Just another walker. I put my sword through his head. The head I used to wash at bath time, the head I kissed at bedtime, full of those unruly curls."

"Michonne, I'm... I'm sorry," Rick stammered. "I didn't know."

"You didn't know because you never asked. I'm not your killing machine, Rick. I'm not just your lieutenant. I'm a mother, and a woman."

"You're my best friend," he whispered. "The one who's been here for everything and hasn't left me." He picked up her hand and stroked it with his own. His bloodshot eyes met hers, their faces so close to one another. "Are you going to leave me now... now that you know what I've done?"

She didn't answer right away. "You need a code, Rick," she replied eventually. "A code of honor. To learn from your mistakes and never do them again. What you've done, you've done. You can't escape it. And neither can I. I'm bound up in all of it, too. But we have to move forward together, Rick. We can't keep being in different places. You think of me as a friend and a useful tool, but I'm more than that. I should be more than that to you."

He looked into her eyes for a long time before answering. "I know that now. I never realized it before, but you are everything to me."

He leaned his head forward, his face tilted a fraction, but Michonne put two fingers on his lips, stilling him. "No, not now. Not today. I don't know when. It... it hurts me that you gave yourself to someone else while I was here the whole time. I can't... I can't just overlook that."

Rick nodded. "I'll wait. I'll wait for you, Michonne. I'll prove myself to you, and I'll wait years, if I have to."

"You were going to die by suicide a few minutes ago," Michonne pointed out, her face stormy.

"No, not now. You're right, as always. I understand now what I have to do. I have a hell of a lot to make right. Some of it, I can't make right, but I'm going to do everything I can with what I have left."

They both stood and embraced in a tight hug. One of his hands cradled her head while the other wrapped around her waist. "I love you, Michonne," Rick whispered. She didn't say it back, but she nodded. They walked back to the Safe Zone together in the light of the rising sun.


End file.
